DIY Book Scanners

[Nate Hill]

Hi all,
Sounds like things are going very well at the LibLab in DC!
I'm sorry I'm not around to be more hands on.

I've been talking a bit with Daniel Reetz creator of the DIY Book Scanner project.
http://www.diybookscanner.org/
His work continues to gain momentum, and he plans to start offering kits to build these things very soon.
Some of the first kits will be available to folks with existing needs: meaning book scanning projects in the queue.

This sounds like a great fit for the LibLab.  So I have a few questions:
Are you all working with a FabLab / TechShop of some sort in DC right now?
Is there a book scanning project you are interested in doing?
Do you have the capacity to support something like this right now?
Does this sound interesting to pursue?

Cheers,
Nate

--
Nate Hill
nathan...@gmail.com
http://www.natehill.net

[Kim Z]

Hi - If photographs would be okay, we are building up digital photo
content to launch a digital archive (due out later this year). We
have lots of mini-photograph collections that we would love help to
scan. If it's exclusive to books, we might still be interested on a
more limited scale. We could try out digitizing a couple key pieces
and feature them as we launch our digital archive too.

Kim Zablud, Special Collections Manager - DCPL, kimberl...@dc.gov

On Sep 21, 11:15 am, Nate Hill <nathanielh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> Sounds like things are going very well at the LibLab in DC!
> I'm sorry I'm not around to be more hands on.
>
> I've been talking a bit with Daniel Reetz creator of the DIY Book Scanner

> project.http://www.diybookscanner.org/

> His work continues to gain momentum, and he plans to start offering kits to
> build these things very soon.
> Some of the first kits will be available to folks with existing needs:
> meaning book scanning projects in the queue.
>
> This sounds like a great fit for the LibLab.  So I have a few questions:
> Are you all working with a FabLab / TechShop of some sort in DC right now?
> Is there a book scanning project you are interested in doing?
> Do you have the capacity to support something like this right now?
> Does this sound interesting to pursue?
>
> Cheers,
> Nate
>
> --
> Nate Hill

> nathanielh...@gmail.comhttp://www.natehill.net

[Nate Hill]

I'll find out about the photos- thanks Kim.
I don't know yet what the price point is for a kit, or how many will be available when.
I'll be in touch...
N

[Justin Grimes]

Kim/Nate 

DYI book scanning project seems interesting. I'd be willing to help out. What is the primary idea behind it...to host a workshop where we should people how to build a book scanner or is the idea we build a book scanner for the primary purpose of scanning stuff then donating it later to an organization that needs a book scanner?

A kit would be nice and easy but unnecessary we could still build a scanner without a kit since most DYI book scanning projects can be easily put together using recycled junk hardware (ie. old digital cameras, computer, etc) 

Justin

[Nate Hill]

Justin, I think it could be either.  But I'm on the other side of the country, and I don't know your needs in DC right now.

From my perspective, which is wanting to see elements of the DC LibLab replicable in other kinds of instances across the country, I like that someone has already put the work into making this kit.  DIY is awesome until it becomes RDIY (redo it yourself).  So I'd say the latter of your ideas is ideal.  But I'm going to back out of this conversation now and not to presume to know your needs over there.  At the end of the day, what makes any of this stuff work is people-power.  It's awesome that you've got some time to donate, Justin.

[Katie Filbert]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 2:43 PM, Nate Hill <nathan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Justin, I think it could be either.  But I'm on the other side of the country, and I don't know your needs in DC right now.

From my perspective, which is wanting to see elements of the DC LibLab replicable in other kinds of instances across the country, I like that someone has already put the work into making this kit.  DIY is awesome until it becomes RDIY (redo it yourself).  So I'd say the latter of your ideas is ideal.  But I'm going to back out of this conversation now and not to presume to know your needs over there.  At the end of the day, what makes any of this stuff work is people-power.  It's awesome that you've got some time to donate, Justin.

I think we could use the scanner at the library and try it out.  I'm curious how small and portable would it be?

If the scanner works well, I think the scanner might also be useful for some of our National Archives projects if it we can get approval for such equipment at NARA.

Cheers,
Katie

 

--
Katie Filbert
President, Wikimedia District of Columbia
http://wikimediadc.org
filb...@gmail.com
@filbertkm / @wikimediadc

[Justin Grimes]

Nate - Sorry didn't know :)  but I agree a low cost DYI book scanner is something that every local library, museum, historic society, etc would greatly benefit from. 

I think this is a winning idea. For DC, I think DCPL folks or any library in the local area would benefit from having DYI book scanners. I know the local library schools at the University of Maryland (and Catholic) would love to have one for demonstration/educational purposes. I also think this is something a lot of local hackers would have fun helping to make (thinking about the folks at HacDC). I've also had conversations about modifying a DYI book scanner to scan archival material at local archives (slight more challenging problem due to delicate materials) this connects back to what Katie said about NARA and IASL.

If this has no local point person then I can start organizing things and people together. I could see us pulling off all three ideas with enough support.

1) Host a workshop teaching people how to make their own book scanner (for hackers, librarians, interested citizens, etc)

2) After we build a few scanners then we host a workshop on "scanning"; talk about technology, OCR, how its works, what can be done, challenges facing book scanning projects (technical, legal); talk about google books project, hathi trust, etc, orphan works (for public)

3) If we make several scanners for demoing during the workshop then we can donate them to local community afterwards.

Justin